THE CHURCHES

The pieve, of a remarkable size, has got a three-nave plan and a single, central apse.
Showing a marked horizontal development, the façade is divided by two orders of blind arcades, springing from pilasters and decorated with concentric diamonds.
Inside, two rows of columns are surmounted by reused capitals, Ionic on the right and Corinthian on the left. The nave is covered by a barrel vault with lunettes, while the aisles are roofed by groin vaults. 17th-century altars are placed against the side walls, onto which a few chapels open.
The church and the bell tower were built by workers specialised in ‘Verrucano’ dimension stone, coming from the nearby quarries of Monte Pisano.
Interestingly, a few ashlars on the counter-façade bear a few incisions featuring medieval games, such as ‘nine men’s morris’.

Rising onto a pre-existing church dedicated to Saint Mary, the building may be dated between the late 11th and the early 12th century. It was apparently commissioned by the archbishop Daiberto, owner of lands, mills and a castle in the village.   
To build the pieve, the bell tower, the cloister and the cemetery, the archbishop donated a land that the Pisan Church had received by the countess Matilda of Canossa. Later, a hospital was also built, set against the church.
The unusual dedication to the martyr saint Ermolao sprang from the donation of the relics donated by the archbishop Pietro Moriconi to the village in 1110.
Throughout the centuries, the pieve underwent a series of enlargements and restoration works.
At the end of the 16th century, a sacristy was built onto the northern side and a transept arm was added. This construction was aimed at obtaining the effect of joining the church to the bell tower.
The main changes occurred in the early 17th century are due to Cosimo Pugliani, an engineer of the Grand Duchy, who had the apse enlarged, the façade restored and a transept arm made symmetrical to the 16th-century one. Pugliani also recovered a series of decorated slabs to have them walled onto the new apse. 
Between 1617 and 1717, the chapel of the baptismal font was built to host the latter. In the 17th century the side altars were built and adorned with painted canvases. 
Still in the 18th century, the interiors were renovated and the groin vaults of the aisles were built, a dome was inserted at the intersection with the transept and the walls were plastered. 
In the following century, the edifice was again renovated with a barrel-vault covering, adorned with lunettes, over the nave. In 1842, the pieve was raised to the rank of Provostship.

The first chapel to the left of the entrance houses an immersion baptismal font, attributed to Biduino’s school and dating from the 12th century. Recent theories assigned the paternity of the work to maestro Gruamonte from Pistoia.
The square-plan font was carved out of a single marble block. Its sides are decorated with arcades resting on piers; floral motifs and figures of saints are sculpted within each section. According to tradition, this font had initially been meant for another church, perhaps Pisa baptistery, although it was later carried to Calci. In order to get the font into the church, given its large size, a wide masonry portion had to be dismantled on the left side of the façade.
The reused capitals placed on top of the nave columns – Ionic on the right row, Corinthian on the left one – are also noteworthy.
A head of Cristo triumphans is kept inside the pieve: attributed to a Pisan master of the 12th   century, it is now incorporated in a modern-age fresco depicting a ‘Holy Face’.
On the exterior of the apse, rebuilt in the 19th century, a few bas-reliefs of Lombard age, are decorated with vegetal and animal motifs. These ashlars were salvaged from the church of S.Maria in Willarada, demolished in that period.

In time, the pieve of Calci lost the characteristic structure of Pisan pievi, composed by three naves with apse and a campanile, to assume a more complex layout by the addition of different bodies. 
The church underwent lots of restoration works ever since the 16th century, partly due to structural changes altering the building, partly to traumatic events that damaged it, such as fires and earthquakes.
The different qualities of the materials used and the remarkable size of a few ashlars on the façade are justified by the continuous maintenance actions.
The roof was frequently repaired, too.
Major works carried out in 1935 removed the hospital facility, by then crumbling, separating it from the adjacent church façade. The demolition, thwarted by the Confraternita della Misericordia, owner of the property, was performed at the end of the 1950’s, even without the approval by the Pisan Soprintendenza.

M. Martini, La storia di Calci. Raccolta di notizie, edite ed inedite intorno a luoghi, cose, persone e fatti della Valle Graziosa, Pisa, Lischi, 1976 (Pisa, Felici, ristampa anastatica 2001).
A.M. Lupetti, La pieve di Calci, tesi di laurea, Università di Firenze, a.a.1988-1989.
E. Garruccio, La pieve dei Santi Giovanni Evangelista ed Ermolao a Calci, tesi di laurea, Università di Pisa, a.a.2004-2005.
G. Tigler, Toscana romanica, Milano, Jaca Book, 2006, pp.238-240.
L. Carletti, C. Giometti, Pietre vecchie ma non antiche, Pisa, Pacini, 2010.